Revenants are monsters introduced in Doom II that are easily recognized by their high-pitched shriek. They take the form of very tall animated skeletons in metallic silver body armor equipped with shoulder-mounted missile launchers, and blood and gore running down their ribcage and legs. Their running movements are a herky-jerky approach akin to a stringed puppet.

According to the manual: Apparently when a demon dies, they pick him up, dust him off, wire him some combat gear, and send him back into battle. No rest for the wicked, eh? You wish your missiles did what his can do.

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A revenant emits a raging/pain-like high-pitched scream, like a roaring "Raaaah!", when spotting the player. While active and within earshot, they give off a heavy huffing breathing sound. They are fast runners, but unlike Demons, run directly at their target rather than zigzagging aimlessly, and are also quick to fire their missiles or punch any nearby targets, making them quite dangerous due to their speed.

Revenants fire two sorts of missiles; unguided and homing. The homing missiles can be identified by their gray smoke trail. During melee combat they can also strike a blow with one of their large fists, complete with an exaggerated punching sound effect. When a revenant is within 196 units of its target, it will resort to its punching attack, unless attacked and hurt, where it counter-attacks with a missile.

Thankfully, they are fairly sensitive to pain, and when hurt, will bend backward at an exaggerated angle, giving off a cry of pain. When killed, a few of the revenant's bones will shatter (producing a "metallic" sound very alike to a "Clink!") and the monster will simply fall on its back, one of the cleanest monster deaths the player will come across.

The revenant's missiles are very powerful and when homing, particularly hard to dodge when out in the open. Fortunately, the pain chance of a revenant is rather high, so a chaingun will generally suffice against a single monster, preventing it from attacking. The revenant is rather fast on its feet, so players must be sure to keep their distance. If they do not, the melee attack of the revenant delivers a fiendishly powerful blow that can easily crush the player with a few hits, so therefore melee attacks are strongly discouraged. On harder difficulties, they are often found in large groups, especially out in the open.

When fighting larger groups of these towering skeletons, it is useful to use a plasma gun, the BFG9000 or a rocket launcher. Two solid blasts from the super shotgun or five well placed shots from the shotgun will reliably kill a revenant. It is advisable for the player to keep moving in order to avoid distant missiles, and if pillars, walls, or other obstacles are available, then they will be useful as barriers for stopping homing missiles. The homing missiles are very difficult to outrun, but if the player is able to strafe to the side and then forward just before being hit, the projectile may not be able to come around again. This tactic is especially useful if the player has backed up against a wall; the missile will impact the wall before it has a chance to orbit for another pass. Another way to dodge them is for the player to slide behind an obstacle or around a corner. The homing missiles are able to round corners, and are thereby able to hit an unwary player, but their ability to change direction is thankfully fairly limited.

The revenant is a fairly dangerous monster to the player because of its tracking missiles, as well as its fast speed, but it is not particularly powerful in monster infighting. Tough, powerful monsters such as the Mancubus, Arachnotron, Cacodemon, Hell Knight or Baron of Hell can waste a revenant fairly easily. A large force of Revenants can be effortlessly outmobbed by bosses like Spider Mastermind and Cyberdemon.

The name revenant is of French origin, and generally means "one who returns (from death)".

When compared to the monster as it appears in the game, the revenant model built during the game's development shows a good deal more muscle tissue, and no chest armor.

The sprite name for the Revenant's missiles is FATB, and is grouped directly under the Mancubus sprites (FATT). The graphics for these missiles may have been initially intended for the Mancubus projectiles earlier in Doom II's development.

Despite the fact that the engine considers the revenant only 56 units in height, the actual sprite of monster is taller closer to 72 units or more in height, making the revenant look as if it is standing "inside" the ceiling if it enters a corridor or room that is less than 72 units in height.

When it dies, the Revenant makes a fairly loud metal clump when it hits the ground, on the account of its metal armor. It doesn't appear to make an audible scream or vocal sound upon death.

PlayStation/Saturn Doom's version of the revenant is considerably easier to tangle with than its PC counterpart; its running speed is much slower (akin to a zombie's or imp's pace), and while it only fires homing missiles, the missiles are also slower and easier to avoid. Its alert and dying sounds also sound done on the cheap in comparison with the other monsters (save for the spiderdemon).

The Revenant appears in PlayStation/Saturn Doom in several maps taken from the original/Ultimate Doom, despite the fact that in the PC version of the game, he did not appear until Doom II. In this version of the game, several other Doom II monsters also appear in original Doom maps (including the Former Commando, Mancubus, Pain Elemental, and Arachnotron).

In a ZDoom-based source port, if the player is killed by a revenant (monster is credited with delivering the blow that reduces player's health to 0%), one of two obituary messages will be displayed at the top of the screen depending on which attack the revenant used to kill the player: "[player name] was punched by a Revenant" or "[player name] couldn't evade a Revenant's fireball" for the punch and missile attacks respectively.

If the player backs up when the revenant tries to punch the player, the punch will miss, which can be heard as a loud whiffing sound. Because of this, skilled players can use a revenant as a meat shield when other monsters are present on the field.

In Brutal Doom, Revenants fire guided and non-guided missiles in volleys of 2 and 4 respectively, and they can all be easily identified beforehand by their outside glowing colors (orangish-red for guided missiles and gold yellow for non-guided missiles). Non-guided missiles are fired and travel faster than guided missiles; the latter ones now fly diagonally towards the ground, unless they can reach their target or hit any obstacle. Their hellish missile launchers can be acquired by destroying or mutilating the Revenant via rocket launcher or chainsaw (Revenant's shoulder cannons are mapped to key 8). As of v19, the Revenant can be blown off/chainsawed in half and its upper torso will walk on its hands and continue to attack (though firing a single guided missile per time and no longer being able to punch the player).

These tables assume that all calls to P_Random for damage, pain chance, impact animations, backfire checks, and smoke trails are consecutive. In real play, this is never the case: counterattacks and AI pathfinding must be handled, and of course the map may contain additional moving monsters and other randomized phenomena (such as flickering lights). Any resulting errors are probably toward the single-shot average, as they introduce noise into the correlation between the indices of "consecutive" calls.

Assumes that direct hits are possible, which does not occur in any stock map.

Assumes that the target is 196 units away. The approximation of consecutive P_Random calls is particularly shaky in the case of a revenant's missile: not only does the total number of calls depend on the flight time of the missile (via the smoke puffs), but the absolute gametic value at launch determines whether the missile is guided or not, and that in turn is highly dependent on how far the revenant walks between attacks.